What do you think?
Rate this book
Trail of Cthulhu RPG
Dreamhounds of Paris
Follow the Trail of Cthulhu into the Dreamlands
From the 1920s to the coming of the Occupation, a new breed of artist prowled the fabled streets of Paris. Combative, disrespectful, irresponsible, the surrealists broke aesthetic conventions, moral boundaries—and sometimes, arms. They sought nothing less than to change humanity by means of a worldwide psychic revolution. Their names resound through pop culture and the annals of art history.
But until now, no one has revealed what they were really up to.
In this comprehensive campaign guide for Trail of Cthulhu, you recreate their mundane and mystical adventures as you stumble onto the Dreamlands, a fantastical realm found far beyond the wall of sleep. At first by happenstance and later by implacable design, you remake it in the fiery image of your own art. Will you save the world, or destroy it?
Choose your player character from a roster of 19 visionaries and madmen.
Put up your dukes as two-fisted filmmaker LUIS BUÑUEL.
Flee a formless entity as Dada impresario TRISTAN TZARA.
Photograph tentacled entities as American expat MAN RAY.
Personify the joy and decadence of the city as chanteuse KIKI DE MONTPARNASSE.
Wield the magic cane that will end the world as theater of cruelty inventor ANTONIN ARTAUD.
Or arrive in Paris as fresh-faced young painter SALVADOR DALÍ, who has come to tear the movement all down and rebuild it in his image.
The Dreamlands are as strange as you can imagine.
Source: http://pelgranepress.com/site/?p=8290
From the 1920s to the coming of the Occupation, a new breed of artist prowled the fabled streets of Paris. Combative, disrespectful, irresponsible, the surrealists broke aesthetic conventions, moral boundaries—and sometimes, arms. They sought nothing less than to change humanity by means of a worldwide psychic revolution. Their names resound through pop culture and the annals of art history.
But until now, no one has revealed what they were really up to.
In this comprehensive campaign guide for Trail of Cthulhu, you recreate their mundane and mystical adventures as you stumble onto the Dreamlands, a fantastical realm found far beyond the wall of sleep. At first by happenstance and later by implacable design, you remake it in the fiery image of your own art. Will you save the world, or destroy it?
Choose your player character from a roster of 19 visionaries and madmen.
Put up your dukes as two-fisted filmmaker LUIS BUÑUEL.
Flee a formless entity as Dada impresario TRISTAN TZARA.
Photograph tentacled entities as American expat MAN RAY.
Personify the joy and decadence of the city as chanteuse KIKI DE MONTPARNASSE.
Wield the magic cane that will end the world as theater of cruelty inventor ANTONIN ARTAUD.
Or arrive in Paris as fresh-faced young painter SALVADOR DALÍ, who has come to tear the movement all down and rebuild it in his image.
The Dreamlands are as strange as you can imagine.
Source: http://pelgranepress.com/site/?p=8290
160 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
About the author
Robin D. Laws
153 books195 followersWriter and game designer Robin D. Laws brought you such roleplaying games as Ashen Stars, The Esoterrorists, The Dying Earth, Heroquest and Feng Shui. He is the author of seven novels, most recently The Worldwound Gambit from Paizo. For Robin's much-praised works of gaming history and analysis, see Hamlet's Hit Points, Robin's Laws of Game Mastering and 40 Years of Gen Con.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 28, 2016
Though my group are Jazz-Era Purists when it comes to Trail of Cthulhu (ToC) and Call of Cthulhu (CoC), that in no way diminished my enjoyment of this excellent, thought-provoking sourcebook.
(Of course, I'm also a sucker for anything Dreamlands-adjacent.)
(Of course, I'm also a sucker for anything Dreamlands-adjacent.)
April 8, 2019
Joins the pantheon of "incredible games I'll probably never play" because the odds of getting a group of people together weird enough and committed enough to make it work is slim to none.
This is a tabletop RPG in which you play as the historical Surrealists of 1920s-1930s Paris, the twist being you're all interacting with Lovecraft's Dreamlands through your art and other means, and hoping to bring about a global psychic revolution through your oneiric dabblings. Naturally, the wheels come off, either through supernatural disaster, hubristic beefing, or a combo thereof.
Meticulously researched and incredibly detailed, this is obviously a labour of love for Laws, and his enthusiasm for his concept and its inherent creative possibilities is infectious. Still, despite reams of info on the characters, their city, and its occult and Mythos history, a decent working knowledge of both Lovecraft and the Surrealists is recommended. However, a lack in either department is not a deal-breaker - Dreamhounds is a book that eagerly invites outside research, and lends itself to being employed as a framework around which to build an engrossing course of self-guided study.
Which probably sounds like too much homework for the D20 orc-bashing crowd (not that there's anything wrong with bashing orcs) but, goddamn, it'd be nice to give this one a red hot go just once.
This is a tabletop RPG in which you play as the historical Surrealists of 1920s-1930s Paris, the twist being you're all interacting with Lovecraft's Dreamlands through your art and other means, and hoping to bring about a global psychic revolution through your oneiric dabblings. Naturally, the wheels come off, either through supernatural disaster, hubristic beefing, or a combo thereof.
Meticulously researched and incredibly detailed, this is obviously a labour of love for Laws, and his enthusiasm for his concept and its inherent creative possibilities is infectious. Still, despite reams of info on the characters, their city, and its occult and Mythos history, a decent working knowledge of both Lovecraft and the Surrealists is recommended. However, a lack in either department is not a deal-breaker - Dreamhounds is a book that eagerly invites outside research, and lends itself to being employed as a framework around which to build an engrossing course of self-guided study.
Which probably sounds like too much homework for the D20 orc-bashing crowd (not that there's anything wrong with bashing orcs) but, goddamn, it'd be nice to give this one a red hot go just once.
March 5, 2015
A beautifully produced book covering Paris and the Dreamlands for Trail of Cthulhu. It was interesting to read, but I can't see ever using it for the primary purpose of running an ongoing campaign where players take the role of historical surrealists in 1930s Paris. It's just not something I can see my players being interested in doing. As a one-shot, maybe, but not a campaign.
If that concept appeals to you though, it's an excellent resource. It could also be used a general resource for Paris and the Dreamlands, but a lot of the information on surrealism and the personalities involved in it would likely have little use in a regular ToC game.
If that concept appeals to you though, it's an excellent resource. It could also be used a general resource for Paris and the Dreamlands, but a lot of the information on surrealism and the personalities involved in it would likely have little use in a regular ToC game.
Read
September 10, 2021Another Bundle of Holding package, the "Cities of Cthulhu," a collection of Trail of Cthulhu material, the core of which is Cthulhu City and Dreamhounds of Paris.
***
In Cthulhu City, the monsters are triumphant in a horrific, nightmarish city dominated by black stone towers the ordinary people pretend not to see. In this campaign frame/setting, the PCs are trying to defend their neighborhoods, or escape, or topple the oppressive rule of the sorcerous mayors, all without gaining too much suspicion.
In other words, it’s an inversion of the typical Cthulhu horror game, where the cults are underground — here, the cults are all out in the open, and the horror isn’t that no one knows, but that no one cares or admits. This book presents the frame (monsters triumphant) and the city (the cults; the locations/encounters/people who make up the city, which is probably my favorite part, as I’m a sucker for presenting NPCs who can be victims, villains, or allies), along with an intro adventure.
This seems like an interesting frame, but so outside the usual Cthulhu/horror scenario that I can see using it more as a one-shot horror for the PCs to escape from -- or as a vision of what they can try to prevent or at least delay. But as a model for a campaign frame, this seems really good: it lays out the rules and ideas (all coherently themed), then presents all the many hooks (like solving the last mayor’s death or taking up the roles of the last resistors who were squashed or, etc.), and again, all these hooks are pointed towards the major themes and ideas of the frame.
***
The campaign frame Dreamhounds puts the PCs into the roles of the major interwar surrealists, who want to transform the world and explore the unconscious, and in so doing, gain access to Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, and the power and horror therein — or which they themselves bring in and so unleash on the world. The Dreamhounds campaign has a semi-official arc: meddle with the Dreamlands joyously, realize it’s a mistake, and try to fix what you’ve done before being destroyed by history.
Besides the Dreamlands to contend with, there’s also the swirling miasma of social and sexual tension, as the Dadaists fuse and splinter, both professionally and, again, sexually. I love how the history of this period is presented through the character biographies, which nicely shows the impact these people had on each other. This is also a showcase of how a focused campaign frame can have a very focused guidebook: so here, we don’t just get a guide to 1930s Paris, but specifically to the 1930s Paris of the surrealists, with all their bars, galleries, etc. (And some keeper advice on how to use vignettes of actual history, interwoven into the horror of discovering the Dreamlands.)
(This is also en passant a great example of how to use your particular bents in your art: Robin D. Laws is clearly very interested and excited by both surrealism in particular and more generally by artistic demimondes, both in the sense of half-world — separate subcultures — and in the louche folks in them. No idea why an RPG designer would feel drawn to those...)
This bundle includes the Book of Ants, an in-universe diary of a poet falling in with the surrealists and making his way to the Dreamlands. (I love how the dates slowly become nonsensical, but otherwise just flipped through it real fast. There's notes in the core book on how to use this as an example, as a plot, as history in the world, etc.)
***
Also included in this bundle, a bunch of semi-random Trail of Cthulhu stuff that doesn't entirely seem to fit the theme of "Cities of Cthulhu":
Adventures:
The Long Con: dust things (evil(?) forces that infest books and take ideas from books) want to free their friends from a dimensional prison, and so try to trick some people into a ritual that will unwittingly open a portal to the great fire of London.
Many Deaths of Edward Brigsby: a thief accidentally clones himself using a magic door, and now the PCs have to track down the multiple versions of the door that are themselves multiplying and letting some horror in.
(These above two adventures are by the same author and show a definite structure that you could use as a template for your own adventures, if you wanted.)
Out of the Woods: a collection of adventures with:
Midnight Sub Rosa: ghouls and the returned dead in small town Alabama
Silence Mill: a murder mystery and a cult in Brittany
Dreaming of a Better Tomorrow for 30 Dollars a Month: a serpent folk sorcerer is killing people to free himself, amid the background of the Civilian Conservation Corps and Black Americans experience of the Depression
The Coldest Walk: cult murders in the cold (the least interesting premise to me)
The Trembling Giant: a Paiute reservation next to cursed grove, and the cultist who believes the grove to be a god of blessed deformations.
Supplements:
Ken Writes About Stuff v1: with materials on monsters for Cthulhu or other Gumshoe games (Deep Ones, Ghouls, Hounds of Tindalos, Lilith, Mi-Go, Shoggoth, Star Vampires, new monsters), weird science (Die Glocke), additional rules (martial arts, mind control), locations (Mumbai), campaign frames (Moon Dust Men, Tomb-Hounds of Egypt)
I especially like the monster guides, with variations on the monsters, mythological echoes, investigation hints, and story seeds.
***
In Cthulhu City, the monsters are triumphant in a horrific, nightmarish city dominated by black stone towers the ordinary people pretend not to see. In this campaign frame/setting, the PCs are trying to defend their neighborhoods, or escape, or topple the oppressive rule of the sorcerous mayors, all without gaining too much suspicion.
In other words, it’s an inversion of the typical Cthulhu horror game, where the cults are underground — here, the cults are all out in the open, and the horror isn’t that no one knows, but that no one cares or admits. This book presents the frame (monsters triumphant) and the city (the cults; the locations/encounters/people who make up the city, which is probably my favorite part, as I’m a sucker for presenting NPCs who can be victims, villains, or allies), along with an intro adventure.
This seems like an interesting frame, but so outside the usual Cthulhu/horror scenario that I can see using it more as a one-shot horror for the PCs to escape from -- or as a vision of what they can try to prevent or at least delay. But as a model for a campaign frame, this seems really good: it lays out the rules and ideas (all coherently themed), then presents all the many hooks (like solving the last mayor’s death or taking up the roles of the last resistors who were squashed or, etc.), and again, all these hooks are pointed towards the major themes and ideas of the frame.
***
The campaign frame Dreamhounds puts the PCs into the roles of the major interwar surrealists, who want to transform the world and explore the unconscious, and in so doing, gain access to Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, and the power and horror therein — or which they themselves bring in and so unleash on the world. The Dreamhounds campaign has a semi-official arc: meddle with the Dreamlands joyously, realize it’s a mistake, and try to fix what you’ve done before being destroyed by history.
Besides the Dreamlands to contend with, there’s also the swirling miasma of social and sexual tension, as the Dadaists fuse and splinter, both professionally and, again, sexually. I love how the history of this period is presented through the character biographies, which nicely shows the impact these people had on each other. This is also a showcase of how a focused campaign frame can have a very focused guidebook: so here, we don’t just get a guide to 1930s Paris, but specifically to the 1930s Paris of the surrealists, with all their bars, galleries, etc. (And some keeper advice on how to use vignettes of actual history, interwoven into the horror of discovering the Dreamlands.)
(This is also en passant a great example of how to use your particular bents in your art: Robin D. Laws is clearly very interested and excited by both surrealism in particular and more generally by artistic demimondes, both in the sense of half-world — separate subcultures — and in the louche folks in them. No idea why an RPG designer would feel drawn to those...)
This bundle includes the Book of Ants, an in-universe diary of a poet falling in with the surrealists and making his way to the Dreamlands. (I love how the dates slowly become nonsensical, but otherwise just flipped through it real fast. There's notes in the core book on how to use this as an example, as a plot, as history in the world, etc.)
***
Also included in this bundle, a bunch of semi-random Trail of Cthulhu stuff that doesn't entirely seem to fit the theme of "Cities of Cthulhu":
Adventures:
The Long Con: dust things (evil(?) forces that infest books and take ideas from books) want to free their friends from a dimensional prison, and so try to trick some people into a ritual that will unwittingly open a portal to the great fire of London.
Many Deaths of Edward Brigsby: a thief accidentally clones himself using a magic door, and now the PCs have to track down the multiple versions of the door that are themselves multiplying and letting some horror in.
(These above two adventures are by the same author and show a definite structure that you could use as a template for your own adventures, if you wanted.)
Out of the Woods: a collection of adventures with:
Midnight Sub Rosa: ghouls and the returned dead in small town Alabama
Silence Mill: a murder mystery and a cult in Brittany
Dreaming of a Better Tomorrow for 30 Dollars a Month: a serpent folk sorcerer is killing people to free himself, amid the background of the Civilian Conservation Corps and Black Americans experience of the Depression
The Coldest Walk: cult murders in the cold (the least interesting premise to me)
The Trembling Giant: a Paiute reservation next to cursed grove, and the cultist who believes the grove to be a god of blessed deformations.
Supplements:
Ken Writes About Stuff v1: with materials on monsters for Cthulhu or other Gumshoe games (Deep Ones, Ghouls, Hounds of Tindalos, Lilith, Mi-Go, Shoggoth, Star Vampires, new monsters), weird science (Die Glocke), additional rules (martial arts, mind control), locations (Mumbai), campaign frames (Moon Dust Men, Tomb-Hounds of Egypt)
I especially like the monster guides, with variations on the monsters, mythological echoes, investigation hints, and story seeds.
March 24, 2026
Navigating the dreamlands in the city of lights…where your creative madness is the key to unlocking the doorways into places many never know exist…
Dreamhounds of Paris by Robin Laws is a quasi-spinoff of Bookhounds of London and another historical setting inspired by Trail of Cthulhu.
The surrealist movement is alive and well in the wake of the end of the Great War.
Creatives of all types converge on Paris to explore their various mediums…only for some to also find secret mediums allowing them to reshape reality itself…
Of course like the artistic movements themselves, there are leaders, factions, rivals, and exploiters…those that seek to create and develop and improve things…and those that only wish to control and destroy…
A lot of setting specific info that’s also transferred to a non Cthulhu game in Paris…along with a nice map and description of various Parisian locations.
The book also suggests players actually play famed surrealist creators, complete with suggested figures and their place in the culture during different periods.
Even if you want a fun dark history of the surrealist movement, this is a fun read…
Dreamhounds of Paris by Robin Laws is a quasi-spinoff of Bookhounds of London and another historical setting inspired by Trail of Cthulhu.
The surrealist movement is alive and well in the wake of the end of the Great War.
Creatives of all types converge on Paris to explore their various mediums…only for some to also find secret mediums allowing them to reshape reality itself…
Of course like the artistic movements themselves, there are leaders, factions, rivals, and exploiters…those that seek to create and develop and improve things…and those that only wish to control and destroy…
A lot of setting specific info that’s also transferred to a non Cthulhu game in Paris…along with a nice map and description of various Parisian locations.
The book also suggests players actually play famed surrealist creators, complete with suggested figures and their place in the culture during different periods.
Even if you want a fun dark history of the surrealist movement, this is a fun read…
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews